1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a wire harness and a method and an apparatus for manufacturing the same, and more particularly to the manufacture of one wire harness (or one sub-harness) by combining a plurality of partial harnesses.
The present application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. Hei. 9-230711, which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is known, there are a plurality of wire harnesses used in the electrical wiring of an automobile, including such as an engine harness, an instrument panel harness, a cowl side harness, a door harness, and a roof harness.
As a method and an apparatus for manufacturing such wire harnesses, as shown in FIG. 13, a method and an apparatus are known which use a wire clamping bar 101 in which a multiplicity of wire clamps 100 are juxtaposed at equal pitches. Incidentally, each wire clamp 100 comprises a pair of mutually opposing clamp members 100a, and electric wires are clamped therebetween.
After a plurality of electric wires 102 for forming one wire harness are cut to a predetermined length, opposite end portions thereof are retained by-mutual adjacent wire clamps 100 and are held in U-shapes on the wire clamping bar 101. In this state, end-processing such as stripping (removal of an insulating sheath) of a wire end and crimping of a terminal is performed.
This wire clamping bar 101 is set in or transferred to a case fitting station 103, and terminals 104 at wire ends are respectively inserted and fitted into terminal accommodating chambers (not shown) of a connector housing (hereafter, simply referred to as the connector) 105 by using an automatic terminal inserting device 107.
A plurality of connectors 105 are arranged in advance on a setting table 106 as shown at reference numerals 1051 to 1054. The terminals 104 are inserted into and retained in predetermined terminal accommodating chambers of connectors selected from the plurality of connectors 1051 to 1054 in a predetermined order.
As shown in FIG. 14, the automatic terminal inserting device 107 has a mounting head 108, a pair of terminal gripping claws 109 for a wire connecting portion 104a of the terminal 104 and a pair of wire gripping claws 110 are provided at a lower end of the mounting head 108 in such a manner as to be capable of being raised or lowered and of being opened or closed. Further, a pair of wire clamp plates 111 which can be opened or closed is provided at the lower end of the mounting head 108, and a terminal holding plate 112 is provided between the pair of terminal gripping claws 109 in such a manner as to be capable of being raised or lowered.
Further, the mounting head 108 is provided in such a manner as to be capable of moving close to or away from the wire clamp 100 (or the wire clamping bar 101) and of being raised or lowered with respect to the same. Further, a moving plate 113 for supporting the mounting head 108 is mounted on a supporting frame 114 of the case fitting station 103, and is provided in such a manner as to be horizontally movable with respect to the setting table 106 on which the plurality of connectors 105 are arranged.
Accordingly, according to the automatic terminal inserting device 107, the terminal 104 can be automatically inserted into the connector 105 by repeating the following steps a to d.
a. The mounting head is moved to immediately above desired wire clamp 100 of the wire clap bar 101 by means of the moving plate 113.
b. At the same time as the lowering and raising operation of the mounting head 108, an end portion of the wire 102 including the terminal 104 is gripped by the opening/closing operation of the terminal gripping claws 109, the wire gripping claws 110, and the wire clamp plates 111, and is lifted up from the wire clamp 100 which retained the wire.
c. Then, the mounting head 108 is moved in parallel to the wire clamping bar 101, and is stopped at a position opposing a desired terminal accommodating chamber of the desired connector 105.
d. The mounting head 108 is advanced forward toward the connector 105, and while the terminal 104 is being inserted into the terminal accommodating chamber, the terminal gripping claws 109, the wire gripping claws 110, and the wire clamp plates 111 are opened consecutively beginning at the front side, thereby releasing the wire end portion. Namely, the terminal 104 is automatically inserted and fitted into the predetermined terminal accommodating chamber of the predetermined connector.
Thus, there is an advantage, among others, in that, by using the wire clamping bar 101 in which the multiplicity of wire clamps 100 are juxtaposed, all the end processing of wires, including the cutting, retention, stripping, terminal crimping, and case fitting (insertion and fitting of a terminal into a connector) of a multiplicity of wires which make up one wire harness, can be handled on one side of the wire clamping bar. A method and an apparatus similar to the above-described method and apparatus have been disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei. 5-55994.
However, since the engine harness, for example, is made up by numerous wires which generally comprise as many as 200 circuits (the number of wires: 200, the number of both end portions that are retained in U-shapes: 400), the number of connectors that are fitted to the wire ends is also numerous. As such, if end processing is performed with respect to these wires by using a single wire clamping bar, troubles are liable to occur, such as erroneous wiring of wires, erroneous crimping of a terminal, erroneous-insertion into a connector, and entanglement of wires or terminals.
On the other hand, to handle numerous wires by a single wire clamping bar, an extremely long bar is required, and not only is a wide working space required, but also a pitch time from the cutting of the wire until completion of final case fitting becomes very long. Hence, the apparatus becomes large and automatic control becomes complex and expensive. Furthermore, if there occurs erroneous wiring or erroneous insertion or the like, since it takes time and trouble in correcting them in an ensuing process, wastage can occur such as discarding the entire wires on the wire clamping bar as defective products.